what is staged and what is real in Borat--

thanks to comtois http://jamespeak.blogspot.com/

http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2006/11/10/guide_to_borat/

good news from jason

http://www.jasongrote.com/

http://szymkowicznaked.blogspot.com

http://szymkowicznaked.blogspot.com

PLAYWRIGHT

I've discovered something recently. My subconscious mind doesn't register the novel I'm trying to write. All the time it wants me to work on plays. It doesn't think I'm a novelist and so it is not impressed with time spent working on the novel. i'm not sure what to do about this. i could try and convince it i guess that novel writing is writing too but it may be a hard thing to convince it of. Especially since noveling doesn't offer the form of thearapy that writing plays does. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's more work or maybe somewhere so deep in me i have told myself i have to be writing a play all the time adn now that's all I can accept. It's like there is an invisible tattoo on all my organs that says playwright and subsequently the novel writing does not feel like progress. Or maybe I'm just in a funk again because I just finished a play and i forget that i always have this moment of happiness followed by a funk that the play is over and exists and by existing some of the doors of what it can be have been closed and it just is something now. in any case, i want to start another play right this second to get out of this funk and that may be what i do. because writing a novel is not helping. although i don't want to stop the novel so i may take on the dubious task of trying to write a novel and a play at the same time. i'll let you know how it goes.

from Chris Durang

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-durang/you-must-watch-hacking-d_b_33271.html

"By creating machines with a security flaw that
includes the ability to change vote tallies with NO
SIGN THAT SOMETHING HAS BEEN CHANGED -- that's one
helluva security flaw -- Diebold shows itself to be a
truly dishonest company. One could decide they're just
incompetent - they're only receiving billions from our
tax dollars for these fraudulent machines - but I
think it's fair enough to say they're dishonest.

I have no idea if my vote on Tuesday will register
properly. And if the votes in my area don't match
"exit polls" or national Pennsylvania polls, there's
no way to do a recount without the paper trail. No
way. "

coming soon

http://www.theater2k.com/t2kmain1.swf

from ny times Ted Koppel

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/opinion/06koppel.html?hp

"We are left with the impression that the grown-ups in
Washington would prefer to make the difficult
decisions for us without involving the courts,
Congress or the press. That is precisely the wrong way
to go about winning this war. Back when the United
States was widely admired, it was for all that was
most cumbersome about our democratic process.

America's efforts to transplant democracy elicit none
of that admiration. How can they, when we appear to
have lost confidence in fundamental aspects of
democracy here at home? What has historically
impressed our allies and adversaries has been our
often flawed, but ultimately sincere, determination to
operate within the law — if not always abroad, then at
least within the United States."

from ny times

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/opinion/05rich.html?em&ex=1162962000&en=8a1ab164161ba7af&ei=5087%0A

"On the same day Mr. Kerry blundered, the United
States suffered a palpable and major defeat in Iraq.
The Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, once again
doing the bidding of the anti-American leader Moktada
al-Sadr, somehow coerced American forces into
dismantling their cordon of Sadr City, where they were
searching for a kidnapped soldier. As the melodramatic
debates over how much Mr. Kerry should apologize
dragged on longer, still more real news got short
shrift: the October death toll for Americans in Iraq
was the highest in nearly two years. Some 90 percent
of the dead were enlisted men and nearly a third were
on extended tours of duty or their second or third
tours. Their average age was 24. "

I didn't get a chance to work on the novel this
morning. What I did do however was finish a first
draft of the play about Bush and Cheney and the War in
Iraq. At the moment it's called "Never Again, a
Fantasy Play."

I don't quite feel the sense of accomplishment I
always think I'll feel when I get to the end of
somtthing. Perhaps it's because I know in some ways
it's just the start of the process and I still have to
hear it out loud and revise it and then try to talk
someone into doing it and then that makes me tired to
think about.

Maybe I can come home and work on the novel after
work. In any case, happy Monday.

http://szymkowicznaked.blogspot.com/

Warrantless

Blue Box Productions has a radio play of mine alog
with some others up here in protest of Bush's illegal
wiretapping.

http://www.blueboxproductions.net/operation%20liberty%20tap.html

If you check back again on the 15th there will be more
plays up.